


Seven Years

by Ultra



Series: From Russia With Love [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst and Feels, Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Battle of Wakanda (Avengers: Infinity War), Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Emotional Hurt, Established Relationship, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Love, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Wakanda (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 10:21:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30003420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ultra/pseuds/Ultra
Summary: It's a long road from Nat & Bucky's long-awaited reunion in Budapest to the point where they might actually get some kind of happily ever after.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Natasha Romanov
Series: From Russia With Love [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2207097
Kudos: 12





	1. Side by Side

**Author's Note:**

> When I wrote, 'From Russia With Love,' I always intended to come back and fill in the seven gap somehow. This is what I came up with, a collection of ficlets that get the couple from reunion to happy ending via a lot of MCU drama!

“This isn’t our fight, you know that, don’t you?”

“Since when were any of the fights really ours?”

Nat smirked, knowing he had a point. Too many missions and none of them really meant a damn thing. If anything, this one was more personal, too personal. Seeing Steve and Tony toe-to-toe, it wasn’t what anyone wanted, but for Bucky and Nat, the choice had been taken out of their hands, again.

“He’s your friend too,” said Bucky, watching her closely as she strapped on her weapons. “Stark.”

“As much of a friend as anybody is these days.” Nat nodded. “But... it’s Steve,” she said, meeting his eyes, knowing he of all people understood.

One single nod confirmed it and their position was decided.


	2. Best of Friends

“Fate had a plan, I guess,” said Steve, shaking his head in wonder as he looked between Bucky and Nat, eyes lingering on her a moment longer. “You never told me.”

“I didn’t know for sure.”

Her eyes dipped to the ground when she said it. Not an entire lie, but not a whole truth either. Bucky could understand that, in the circumstances. The best friend from his original life; the love of his life from a whole other generation, and they already knew each other. As coincidences went, it was a big one.

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” Steve insisted. “You’re both here now.”

“But not for long.” Bucky shook his head, even as his friend made a face. “Steve, I can’t be out in the world, not yet.”

Nat gripped his hand and smiled bravely. “But we do have a plan”


	3. A Kiss Goodbye

“I know this is all for the best,” she said with a shake in her voice she couldn’t seem to control. “I just wish it was a flip-a-switch kind of deal, an easy fix. Nothing is these days, right?”

“These days?” Bucky echoed with an all too familiar smirk she wanted to kiss right off his face. “I thought I was the old timer in this relationship.”

“Maybe.” Nat smiled. “But you look pretty good on it.”

Jokes were easier. So much simpler than facing reality.

They came to Wakanda with a purpose. His brain needed fixing, deprogramming, whatever it was called, and she had a job of her own to do, out in the world. He had to stay and she had to go. Painful as it was, there was no changing it.

She gripped his hands tightly in her own. “When you forget all the other stuff, just don’t...” 

He squeezed back tighter and met her eyes. “That’s not going to happen.”

Next moment, she was pressed up against him, hands holding his head in place as she kissed him in a way he definitely wouldn’t forget, even if, by some awful chance, everything else did slip away.

A kiss goodbye, though for how long, neither knew.


	4. Playing Catch-Up

“Well, they do say blondes have more fun.”

She turned back to look at him, wind blowing her hair back from her face, sun lighting her up like a real hero. She had more than earned the title in his eyes, even if the world wasn’t always so sure.

“James.”

His name from her lips never failed to make his heart skip a beat, and then she was running, leaping into his arms, and he was kissing her again, like he had dreamed of doing, night after night in Wakanda.

“Anybody would think they missed each other,” said Sam, as he and Steve strolled over to the scene.

Bucky barely heard or saw anything but his Natalia. She was all he needed.


	5. To Infinity...

“I didn’t expect to be back here so soon!” Bucky yelled over the battlefield of Wakanda, while the Avengers fought off the outriders all around.

“Come on, soldier. As if you’d want to be anywhere but in the middle of the fight,” Nat countered.

She spun around just as he did, their backs pressed together as they fought off the enemy like the professionals they were. Blow by blow, shot by shot, the bad guys fell and the unlikely good guys prospered.

Turning into each other, Bucky huffed out a breath.

“Fighting’s what they trained me for, what they built me for,” he admitted, flexing his newest metal arm. “I can still think of better ways to spend my time,” he told her with a smile.

Nat smiled back at him. “We make it through this, you can tell me all about it,” she promised, as if she needed an explanation.

The next wave came soon after that. They didn’t get a chance to talk again.


	6. ...and Beyond

Devastated.

She had heard the word said, seen it written, thought she knew what it meant. With all she had been through in her life, all she had seen, all she had done. She had been the cause of devastation, she thought she had suffered it too. Nat had been so wrong. 

A snap of the fingers, that was all it took. One second the world was as it should be and the next... Her eyes were still fixed on the spot, long after her knees had buckled and her mind gone blank.

He was standing there, her James, and then, suddenly, he was gone.

Not injured, not dead, just impossibly gone, almost as if he had never been there at all. He was gone and her mind along with him. Her heart was broken, shattered beyond all reason. For the first time in her life, Nat had no idea what came next.


	7. Lost Boy

He thought he had seen it all. Poverty, war, terror. From both sides, some incarnation of him or other had stood and watched as people suffered, got into the middle of the fight and picked a side, one way or another. He stood up for his friends, his country, his girl, his life. They made him stand for evil once, but no more.

Now, he wasn’t sure what he stood for, if he stood at all. He had been known by a handful of names and now none of them made sense.

Nothing made sense and everything was lost.

Everything but hope.

Somewhere, just beyond his reach, he knew someone was waiting, someone was fighting to get him back. He belonged somewhere, with someone, and there was a way home. He just had to be patient.


	8. How Long Is Too Long?

“I keep thinking, this next plan, it has to be the one that works, right? There has to be a way, because if not...” Nat paused and shook her head. “I tell myself that if I can’t fight for myself anymore, at least I should fight for him. He started out the All-American Boy type like you, he’d want me to stand up, be brave, right?”

Steve sighed. “I can’t tell you what to do, Nat, and I highly doubt Bucky would ever have tried either,” he said with a half-smile. “All I know is that he obviously loved you, and if there’s a chance that we can get him back - get them all back - then we have to take it. It’s worth the shot, right?”

Nat nodded her head without pause, but no more words would come. Five years was a long time and the pain remained the same. This plan had to work, there really was no other choice.


	9. One Last Leap

Growing up, she hadn’t really known love at all.

It was amazing to Nat, as she stood there on the brink, looking into the eyes of her best friend, to realise she now knew there were so many ways to love somebody, and with her whole heart.

Losing James had torn her apart inside. The idea of bringing him back just for her to be gone, it was a cruel twist of fate, but she couldn’t live with the alternative.

Clint had saved her life, more than once, in more ways than he would ever know. He was her brother in arms and so much more besides. He had a wife and a family that needed him. It was hardly a choice at all.

“Nat, you can’t,” he told her, tears in his eyes. “You have a life to live too. He’ll come back and...”

“And he’ll survive without me,” she said, even as her voice cracked and her vision grew blurry. “That’s what we all are, Barton. Not Avengers, just survivors... until we choose our time to stop,” she said, gaze returning to the long drop into nothing.

Taking a deep breath, she let her eyes fall shut, pushed aside the sound of Clint yelling for her to get back and ran forward.

“I’m sorry, James,” she whispered, as she plummeted into the abyss and all that meant.


	10. Aftermath

“I’m so sorry, Buck.”

Steve’s hand on his shoulder was familiar enough to make him smile in spite of everything, but nothing was really going to make him feel better, not today. He wondered if he was ever getting past this one.

“She said we were two of a kind,” he recalled. “Built to be monsters, but we fought back,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t know about me, but she really was a hero when it counted. I know this day is all about Stark, and it should be, but...”

“But she made the ultimate sacrifice too,” Steve agreed. “I mean, without her, we wouldn’t be standing here, but... I just wish it hadn’t come to that.”

Bucky swallowed hard, meaning to reply, to agree with everything his buddy said, but he couldn’t. There was nothing to say or do, nothing that could bring back what they had lost, what he had lost, most of all. Never before had he so easily understood how Steve felt when he awoke to the new world.

What was the point in being returned to existence, when the love of your life was long gone?


	11. Fate and Destiny

It was first time in a week that he found a way to smile and mean it. Seeing Sam talking with Steve, now an old man who had lived the life he always deserved to have, it was something special. There would be a new Captain America and the world would go on turning, with a hero at the helm to steer it straight.

Bucky wasn’t sure what his own path would be from here. Maybe he’d help Sam out, if he wanted the company. He certainly needed something to keep his mind off her.

“James?”

His eyes closed when he heard his name, sure he was hallucinating. The dreams were so vivid every night, as if she were right there beside him, but he always woke to a cold empty space and a cold sweat besides.

“James, please.”

The hand on his shoulder felt so real and Bucky was sure he couldn’t have fallen asleep standing up like this. Unless the whole thing was imagined. Surely, it had to be, he thought, even as he turned around and saw her there, smiling brightly, looking as if she were lit from within.

“Natalia?” he checked, one trembling hand reaching out to cradle her cheek.

This time, unlike all the others, she didn’t disappear before his eyes.

Tears streamed down her face, down his too, and then they were in each other’s arms, the two of them talking over each other in three different languages and all at once. 

When he kissed her, it was like coming home. When she told him she loved him, he said it back, over and over, never growing tired of repeating it.

Finally, somehow, they were both back where they belonged, together, promising each other forever and beyond, and meaning every single word.


End file.
